
Book_„:., Q^^^ 



PRESENTED RY 



THIRD EDITION. PRICE 25 CENTS. 



UNITED STATES 
"HISTORY" 

AS THE YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT 

BY' 



A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 



GLEN ALLF:N, VA.: 

CUSSONS, MAY & CO., INCORPORATED. 
1900. 



THIRD EDITION. / PRICE 25 CENTS 




/^9 

UNITED STATES 
"HISTORY" 

AS THE YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT 

BY 



A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 



GLEN ALLLN, VA.: 

CUSSONS, MAY & CO., INCORPUKATKD 
1900. 

v.. 



.5 



" What did they lack that conquerors should have 
Save history's purchased page to call them great ? 
A wider field ?— a consecrated grave,? 
Their hopes were not less high : their souls loere Jull as brave ! " 

P. 

(Perwn). 

20 Mr '01 



4 



<r ■■ 



r< 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

MY COMRADES 

WHO FELL IN DEFENCE 

OF THEIR 

INHERITED LIBERTIES 

THESE PAGES ARE 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



Publishers' Note. 



These pages give the candid utterances of a Confed- 
erate soldier who strenously opposed disunion ; not as 
doubting the rightfulness of secession, but as gravely 
questioning its expediency. 

During the period of agitation which preceded the 
war he believed that the revolutionary spirit which 
then infected the North was but a passing phase of 
fanaticism, and that that fanaticism was destined to 
perish under the rebuke of all good citizens who, he 
believed, would surely unite in upholding the Consti- 
tution and the laws. But when Lincoln's call for an 
army of invasion found so swift response among the 
multitude, it became evident that Northern conserva- 
tism had been over-estimated, and that the advocates 
of secession had really- read the portents aright. 

The author has always held that the full measure 
of America's greatness could be achieved only beneath 
a single flag, but he is equally firm in the conviction 
that a true spirit of nntional unity will never be 
attained by a distortion of historic truths. He believes 



8 Publishers' Note. 

that the highest and noblest aspirations of a people 
will take their impress from that which is worthiest in 
their traditions, and that if they are so unfoitunate as 
to feel no just pride in their past they may well despair 
of finding any rational hope for their future. In short, 
he insists that there can be no evil so deep and abid- 
ing as that which must befall a people who have been 
taught to hold the memory of their ancestors in derision 
and contempt. Believing thus, his creed is: "Absolute 
fairness in the historic treatment of the past, — then 
unity of effort for the upbuilding of a nation such as 
the world has not seen." 



United States '* History" as the Yanl<ee 
Makes and Takes It. 



ON the general merits, or rather demerits, 
te of The South it is quite evident that 
the outside world has made up its mind. 
The "accepted fable" or 'Vlistillation of 
rumors" which we call histor}^, has fully 
crystallized, and there seems but little 
ground for supposing, during the present 
generation, that there will be any revision 
of the judgment already pronounced. 

For two-and-thirty years our Northern 
friends have deprecated an}^ allusion on our 
part to the causes or character of the war, 
assuring us that every impulse of manhood 
and every throb of patriotism demanded 



10 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

that we should buiy the past, with all its 
illusive hopes and unavailing griefs, and 
bend our undivided energies to the upbuild- 
ing of a common country. And that is pre- 
cisely the thing which we have been doing. 

Meantime, during those same two-and- 
thirty years, those Northern friends of ours 
have been diligent in a systematic distortion 
of the leading; facts of American history — 
inventhig, suppressing, perverting, without 
scruple or shame — until our Southland 
stands to-day pilloried to the scorn of all 
the world and bearing on her front the 
brand of every infamy. 

This has been accomplished not alone 
nor chiefly by historic narrative or formal 
record, but rather by the persistent use, at 
all times and on all occasions, of every 
form and mode of unfriendly expression — 
in pulpit and on platform, at lyceum and 
on the hustings, by picture and story, by 
essay and song, by sedate disquisition and 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 11 

airy romance, and in a general way by the 
unwearied false coloring of all past and 
current events. 

Step by step the malignant work has 
gone on. Each point yielded by Confed- 
erate silence has been swiftly seized as 
new vantage ground for Federal aggression. 
The forbearance of the South has been 
misconstrued. In her solicitude for the 
honor of the American name, she has re- 
frained from either vindicating herself or 
characterizing the conduct of her con- 
querors. Like the true mother at the judg- 
ment seat of the Great King she has accepted 
injustice rather than bring under condem- 
nation the child of her own being. "^^ And 
she has her reward. 

For thus it has come to pass that in the 
popular mind her very name has been made 
an embodiment of folly, a symbol of mean- 



*The domain of Virginia originally extended from Carolina to 
Canada, and from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific. 



12 UNITED STATES " HISTOKY " AS THE 

ness, a proverb of utter and incurable in- 
efficiency. The economist Avith a principle 
to illustrate, the morahst full of his Neme- 
sian philosophy, the dramatist in quest of 
poetic justice — in short every craftsman of 
tongue or pen with a moral to point or a 
tale to adorn turns instinctively to this 
mythical, this fiction-created South, and 
finds the thing he seeks. 

The world has decided against us, and 
there remains to us now but a single hope — 
the hope of winning and holding something 
better than a dishonored place in the hearts 
of our own children. And even this hope, 
modest yet none the less precious, is fading 
away as the da3^s go by. A wise and philo- 
sophical historian has justly said that "a 
people which takes no pride in the noble 
achievements of a remote ancestry will never 
achieve anything worthy to be remembered 
by refnote descendants." Truer words were 
never spoken. And yet our grandchildren, 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 13 

trained in the public schools, often mingle 
with their affection an indefinable pity, a 
pathetic sorrow — solacing us with their 
caresses while vainly striving to forget "our 
crimes." A bright little girl climbs into 
the old veteran's lap, and hugging him hard 
and kissing his gray head, exclaims : " I 
don't care, grandpa, if you were an old 
rebel! I love you!" 

But there is to be an end of this. The 
friends of the Grand Army of the Republic 
have spoken. And ever since the war ended, 
that army has been a potential force. Noth- 
ing more is to be said in palliation of the 
rebels or the rebellion — no word of com- 
fort, no plea of sympathy. Confederates are 
always to be described as "insurrectionists" 
who sought to_ destroy the Government. 
"Treason is to be made odious." The story 
of the war is to be told from the victor's 
standpoint, and from the victor's standpoint 
alone. The existing histories are to be 



14 UNITED STATES '* HISTOKY " AS THE 

expurgated. Every tribute to Southern 
heroism is to be blotted out, and the 
sum total of martial glory is to be trans- 
ferred to the Grand Army of the Republic. 
This plan has doubtless many advantages. 
It seems to settle hard questions so easily. 
Military fame is elusive, and if it comes 
not by gage of battle, there is really noth- 
ing more natural than to invoke it by other 
means. And our Northern friends have 
chosen wisely. If the three tailors of Tooley 
Street could achieve undying renown by 
putting forth a mere preamble, what may 
not the friends of the Grand Army accom- 
plish by writing down a solid column of 
resolutions? They have labored long and 
arduously, but have at last hit the mark. 
We admire their perseverance, their re- 
sourcefulness, but most of all we felicitate 
them on their success in giving a new 
meaning to the old aphorism that "the pen 
is mightier than the sword." 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 15 

The United States History which to-day 
enjoys the widest circulation and the liighest 
fame is the recent work of Gold win Smith, 
Doctor of Canon Law and Professor of the 
Humanities, Toronto, Canada. 

The learned author has gathered his in- 
spiration, and what he calls his facts, from 
many sources. He enumerates by title no 
less tlian twenty-two authorities, and adds 
that a complete list would be out of pro- 
portion to the size of the book itself. And 
yet there is absolutely nothing to indicate 
that he has troubled himself with more 
than one side of his subject. He makes no 
allusion of any kind to any writer who has 
extended his investigations in the faintest 
degree beyond the beaten paths of Northern 
historical orthodoxy. There is not a frag- 
ment of reference to Sage's colossal work, 
or the scholarly monograph of Curry, or 
the vivid picturings of Maury, or the com- 
prehensive exposition of Stephens, or the 



16 UNITED STATES '"hISTOEY" AS THE 

philosophical review of Ropes, or indeed 
any citation whatever which can inspire a 
reasonable hope of the slightest tendency 
towards impartial treatment. 

Mr. Goldwin Smith, however, is something 
more than a mere Doctor of Canon Law 
and Professor of the Humanities. He takes 
high rank among the masters of political 
economy, and surely not without abundant 
reason, for the skill with which he has 
adapted his wares to his market is beyond 
all praise. 

His book is published both in New York 
and London, and is intended, he informs 
us, " for English rather than American 
readers;" nevertheless, it has become amaz- 
ingly popular with our brethren throughout 
the North. 

The general plan of his work is an un- 
sparing viUification of the South. This wins 
for him Northern plaudits. Amid the glee- 
ful tumult he weaves in his sneers and 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 17 

gibes on America at large, and thus opens 
a second market for liis books among his 
own class of delighted Britishers. 

South Carolina, he says, got her start by 
combining " buccaneering with slave own- 
ing," and utihzed her ports by making them 
a shelter for pirates and corsairs, '^ such as 
Captain Kidd and Blackbeard." 

Georgia he deals with more leniently. 
Her people were not distinctly criminal, 
but just languidly and lazily vicious — shift- 
less, drunken and beggarly. She became 
"the refuge of the pauper and the bank- 
rupt." Her first settlers were "good-for- 
nothings who had failed in trade" — a "shift- 
less and lazy set," who "called for rum;" 
but later on " better elements came in, 
Highlanders, Moravians, and some of the 
persecuted Protestants of Salzburg." 

But Virginia seems to be his especial 
aversion. From her very beginning it has 
been her misfortune to awaken within him 



18 UNITED STATES '' HISTORY " AS THE 

the most distressing emotions. He says 
she was not started right; tiiat her first 
settlers were an unpromising lot — lackeys, 
beggars, broken-down gentlemen, tapsters 
out of a job. And things went from bad 
to worse. "To the crew of vagabonds were 
afterwards added jail-birds." * * " Con- 
victs were offered their choice between the 
gallows and Virginia," and some were wise 
enough to choose the gallows. They were 
not nice. Their aims were low, their mo- 
tives sordid, "their very place of settlement 
has long been a desolation, and only frag- 
ments of ruin mark its site." 

Such is the forbidding background of Mr. 
Goldwin Smith's historical picture when he 
begins to light it up with the luminous 
glories of the Plymouth settlement. The 
Pilgrims, he assures us, were an altogether 
different kind of people. There was noth- 
ing sordid about them, nothing grovelling, 
nothing base. Their pure liearts were too 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 19 

full of simple faith and holy zeal to afford 
room for corrupting influences or worldly- 
desires. "Some sustaining motive higher 
than gain was necessary to give them vic- 
tory in their death struggle with nature, 
to enable them to make a new home for 
themselves in the wilderness, and to found 
a nation." 

It was not only during the early period 
of colonization that the New Englanders 
were superior to the Virginians. The dis- 
tinction seems to have widened as time 
went on. "Though no longer gold seekers, 
the men of Virginia were not such colonists 
as the Puritans. They were," he says, 
"more akin in character to the Spaniard on 
the south of them, who made the Indian 
work for him, than to the New Englander, 
who worked for himself." * * "To work 
for them they had from the first a number 
of indentured servants, or bondsmen, jail- 
birds, many of them; some kidnapped by 



20 UNITED STATES " HISTOEY " AS THE 

press-gangs in the streets of London, all of 
depraved character." * '^ "Afterwards 
came in ever-increasing volume African 
slavery, the destined bane of Virginia and 
her ultimate ruin. Thus," he says, " were 
formed the three main orders of Virginia 
society : the planter oligarchy, the ' mean 
white trash,' and the negro slaves." And 
so for two hundred years she plodded on, 
unredeemed, her "poor whites" being hope- 
lessly given over to " a barbarous and de- 
based existence." 

As were the people so were their leaders. 
"A chief fomenter of the quarrel" [with 
England] "was Patrick Henry, a man who 
had tried many ways of earning a liveli- 
hood, and had failed in all." * * * "A 
bankrupt at twenty-three, he lounged in 
thriftless idleness, till he found that tho he 
could not live by industry he could live by 
his eloquent tongue." 

This is the Goldwin Smith idea incarnate. 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 21 

It is the Yankee idea, the Puritan idea. 
The logical New England brain would 
formulate and demonstrate the proposition 
thus : 

1. Patrick Henry, furnished with a good 
stock of groceries, failed at twenty-three. 

2. A Puritan, even of the tenth magni- 
tude, under like circumstances, would not 
fail at twenty-three. 

Ergo : A tenth-rate Puritan is the supe- 
rior of Patrick Henry. 

Such are the limitations of the New Eng- 
land mind. Under the law of its very 
being it is fettered by its single standard 
of worth, and is therefore qualified to pass 
judgment only on those subjects which by 
it are measurable or deemed worthy of 
measurement. Its supreme test of merit is 
accumulation; the capacity to amass. 

As a student of natural history our 
author has doubtless been taught that the 
eagle is without a rival in range of vision 



22 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

or strength of wing. And j^et he should 
know that the busy magpie in half an hour 
will sp3^ out and store away more bits of 
glass and shining beads and glittering 
trumpery of every sort than the Bird of 
Jove will be likely to get together in a 
score of years. Mr. Goldwin Smith does 
not seem to make proper allowance for 
differences in instinct. 

A generous foe, a member of the aris- 
tocratic order which Henry so fiercely 
assailed, sees in the young Virginian some- 
thing other than a "shiftless idler" and 
"lounging bankrupt." The poet-peer felic- 
itously presents him to all nations and to 
all ages as "the forest-born Demosthenes" 
— the standard-bearer of a brave people, 
outraged bv unendurable wrongs, yet reso- 
lute to transmit to their posterity the liber- 
ties which were their birthright. 

With that prescience which is the heaven- 
bestowed gift of genius the j^oung patriot 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 28 

clearly discerned the signs of the times. 
He foresaw the real nature of that tempest 
which was fast gathering throughout the 
civilized globe. He knew that tho the 
world for two centuries had been awakening 
from its lethargy of a thousand, years, yet 
the time was only then ripening for man- 
kind's deliverance. Instead of minding his 
shop, as Mr. Goldwin Smith would have 
done; instead of consecrating himself heart 
and soul to movements in the tallow trade 
or fluctuations in the calico market, he gave 
his brilliant intellect free range through 
the whole cycle of human knowledge, and 
summed up the situation of the hour with 
a precision and comprehensiveness which is 
still the marvel of statists and historians 
and political philosophers. 

He saw the forces of tyranny marshalling 
themselves on every hand against the spirit 
of liberty, and he saw that the spirit of 
liberty was everywhere the spirit of the 



24 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

age. He foretold the nature of the coming 
struggle, with its burden of grief for every 
home in Western Europe. He heard the 
tread of mighty armies and the sorrowing 
cry of oppressed multitudes ; a cry Avhich 
was soon to change its accent and precipitate 
that frightful conflict which shook the earth. 
The hour was approaching when monarchs 
and priests and conquerors must unite to 
try conclusions in a death grapple with the 
awakened peoples — an hour when the new 
world might sever the ligatures* which 
bound it to the old — an hour when America 
by one bold stroke might fling off the 
ancient traditions which else would forever 
entrammel her with the abuses and super- 
stitions of a despotic and benighted past. 

It was for the work of that hour that 
Patrick Henry was born. 

The informed historian discerns in him, 
not the " storm petrel of revolution," but 
the defender of inherited liberties. He 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 25 

came at a moment when free institutions 
were trembling in the balance. The old 
theory of kingly right to govern wTong was 
being again asserted. The illimitable and 
unchecked right to tax was declared in the 
very terms which had demanded benevo- 
lences and ship-money. Lord North and 
the Earl of Bute and George the Third had 
formed a triune despotism which bore every 
mark of the despotism of Strafford and 
Laud and Charles the First. And it was 
the lot of Patrick Henry at that crucial 
moment to lead the forlorn hope of consti- 
tutional liberty just as John Hampden had 
led it, under the same conditions, a hundred 
years before. 

It is nothing to the purpose that the 
colonies won their independence, their State- 
hood, a few years before the coming of 
the grand catastrophe. Their action was 
simply the first episode of that mighty 
drama. The prize battled for was the boon 



26 UNITED STATES " HISTOKY " AS THE 

of civil liberty; the people interested were 
the civilized nations ; and it was needful 
that the first blow should come from the 
Western hemisphere. And it is the glory 
of Henry that his genius discerned the end 
from the beginning — that he saw in the 
approaching doAvnfall of crown and sceptre 
and mitre, and all the infinite paraphernalia 
of old world oppression, mankind's best 
hope for the new world's deliverance. And 
so amidst the first mutterings of the storm 
which was to culminate in universal wreck- 
age — amidst the portents which prefigured 
the vision of tottering thrones and shattered 
dynasties and crumbling empires, he upheld 
the brave faith that then and there might 
be laid, broad and deep, the enduring foun- 
dations of the temple of American liberty. 

It is safe to say that throughout his 
entire work Mr. Goldwin Smith never utters 
the name of a Virginian without bestowing 
upon him the tribute of his scorn. 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 27 

If sometimes he seems to praise Wash- 
ington it is only that he may be the better 
able to mark, by force of contrast, the 
worthlessness of his followers and the bad- 
ness of his cause. 

"Without him," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
that cause " would have been ten times 
lost," and the names of those who had 
drawn the country into the conflict would 
have gone down to posterity linked with 
defeat and shame." Still, continues the 
author, "we can hardly number among 
great captains a general who acted on so 
small a scale," one who " never won a 
battle," and whose final success after all 
"was due not to native valor but to foreign 
aid." The chief merit which he grants to 
Washington was "his calmness and self- 
control in contending with the folly and 
dishonesty of Congress and the fractious- 
ness of the State militia." As a commen- 
tary on the times he quotes a casual remark 



28 UNITED STATES " HISTOKY " AS THE 

of Governeur Morris: "Jay,' ejaculated 
Governeur Morris thirty years afterwards, 

'what a lot of d d scoundrels we had 

in that Second Congress ! ' ' Yes,' said Jay, 
'we had,' and he knocked the ashes from 
his pipe." In a nation where all are blind, 
a one-eyed man will be king. And such is 
substantially the distinction which Mr. Gold- 
win Smith accords to George Washington. 

James Madison, one of the most eminent 
and blameless statesmen of any age or 
nation is curtly dismissed as "a well-mean- 
ing man, but morally weak." 

Henry Clay, orator, patriot, pacificator — 
passionately beloved by his friends and 
honored even by his political opponents — 
devoted beyond all else to the welfare of 
his country, and ever read}^ to make any 
sacrifice at the shrine of an unbroken 
Union — who Curtius-like flung himself time 
and again into the abysses of sectional dis- 
cord, and whose whole life was a concord- 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 29 

ance of the placid words he spoke when he 
met his pohtical defeat, "it is better to be 
right than president;" — this man, able, pure, 
magnanimous, generous in his ambitions, 
avowed in his convictions, steadfast in his 
aims, true to his friends, charitable to his 
opponents, flexible in expedients yet firm 
as the primal rocks where principle was 
involved; this man, the latchet of whose 
shoes his accuser is not worthy to unloose, 
is flippantly denounced as a mere "political 
acrobat," a "dazzling but artful politician 
who owed his fall to a false step in the 
practice of his own art." 

John Randolph, he tells us, had "natural 
ability" but lacked "good sense" and had 
" no power of self-control." * * " With 
the arrogance of his class he would enter 
the Senate with his hunting whip in his 
hand, and behave as if he were in his 
kennel." 

The "behavior" of Virginians seems in- 



30 UNITED STATES " HISTORY" AS THE 

deed to be a subject of ever -recurring 
solicitude with Mr. Goldwin Smith. For 
he is exceeding strong on questions of 
deportment — a weighty judge of "leather 
and prunello." 

He makes the customary fling at "plan- 
tation manners," but is mildly surprised 
that "Franklin and Samuel Adams" should 
have been "lacking in the ordinary traits of 
gentlemen." As for Patrick Henry nothing- 
better was to be expected, since "the char- 
acter of an English gentleman " is not to 
be formed "on a plantation or in the back- 
woods," — an opinion, by the way, which is 
anything but English if we exclude such 
authorities as the distinguished author, the 
'Arrys and 'Arrietts of Bow Bells, and the 
eminently respectable contingent of Servants' 
Hall. 

The only American whom Mr. Goldwin 
Smith seems to hold in real regard is 
the infamous Benedict Arnold — the sordid 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 31 

wretch who for British gold plotted the 
betrayal of his camp, his comrades, and 
his cause. Mr. Goldwin Smith should beware 
instinct — the instinct which impels him to 
laud evil as inevitably as it constrains him 
to decry that which is good. He belittles 
Washington as naturally as he praises 
Arnold. "Arnold," he says, "was one of 
the best of the American commanders and 
perhaps the most daring of them all." '" * 
"He was slighted and wronged by the 
politicians," explains our author, and "seems 
to have despaired of the cause." As a 
patriot " he shrank from the idea of the 
French alliance," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
and believed "that France had designs on 
Canada." Under those circumstances he 
resolved to enact the role of General Monk, 
and to that end opened negotiations with 
the British Commander. 

A writer who is not ashamed to tlius 
construe as a noble impulse what was really 



32 UNITED STATES *' HISTORY " AS THE 

an attempted betrayal — the basest since the 
kiss of Judas — shows pecuHar fitness for 
our author's self-appointed task. 



In his treatment of incident Mr. Goldwin 
Smith is no less buoyant and free-handed 
than in his judgment of character. He has 
no prejudices ; no bias. All kinds of 
knowledge are equally welcome ; all sources 
of information equally meritorious. Any 
rumor of the camp, any scrap of idle 
gossip, any stray vagary of the newspaper 
correspondent, so it meets his needs, is 
accounted proper pabulum for the Muse of 
History. 

Here are a few of his utterances, taken 
almost at random : 

"Jefferson Davis when captured" was 
" farcically disguised in woman's clothes." 

"The slaveholders escaped military ser- 
vice while they thrust the poor under fire." 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 33 

"Confederate prisoners were well fed, and 
suffered no hardships." ''' * * " If many 
of them died it was because the caged 
eagle dies." 

** Guards pressed men in the streets," and 
''conscripts were seen going to Lee's army 
in chains." 

The Southern clergy were '' not only 
ignorant but cringing and degraded." 

"Jackson was nicknamed 'Stonewall'" be- 
cause of his steadfastness "on a field of 
general panic." 

Wilkes Booth was "a ranting Virginia 
actor" who drew his inspiration from "the 
tyrannicide motto of his State." 

"At the taking of Fort Pillow the negroes 
were nailed to logs and burned alive." 

"Copperheads were so called from a rep- 
tile which waits on the rattlesnake, the rat- 
tlesnake being emblematic of the South." 

"The Northern press, unlike the slave 
press of the South, never misled the people 



34 UNITED STATES " HISTOEY " AS THE 

by publishing false news of military suc- 
cesses." 

'^ The Southern lady was but the head of 
a harem." She "might be soft, elegant, and 
charming, tho there was an element in her 
character of a different kind, which civil 
war disclosed." 

Slanders and perversions such as these 
seem unworthy of serious refutation. They 
arouse loathing rather than resentment. 
And so amid our unutterable and unuttered 
contempt they generally escape rebuke. Yet 
the world believes them. It is nothing that 
many of these fables are foolish and in- 
credible in themselves. It is nothing that 
they are false to nature, false to fact, false 
to the canons of fiction. It is nothing that 
they confute each other. It is nothing that 
they would be mutually destructive if they 
should meet, for they are scattered through- 
out many pages and are digested singly. 

Frightful stories are told of horrible 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 35 

torture inflicted by Southerners on tlieir 
hapless prisoners. And charming pastorals 
ai-e written on the loviiigkindness of the 
Northern people as manifested by their 
beneficent treatment of the captives in their 
hands. And yet when Mr. Goldwin Smith 
is confronted by the official prison records 
on each side — when it is shown that the 
death rate in Northern prisons exceeded the 
death rate in Southern prisons by nearly 
eight per cent. — the versatile author has his 
ready reason: "If many of the Southerners 
died it was because the caged eagle dies." 

This in a sense is true, and is a just tho 
unconscious tribute to the soldiery of the 
South. Many of them did die as the caged 
eagle dies; they did beat out their hearts 
against the prison bars; their spirits at last 
did sink ; their eyes, dauntless in battle, did 
grow dim. And so, tho they were still 
unsubdued, their pulses ceased at last to 
beat, and only their mortal clay remained 



36 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

to those who could destro}^ their bodies 
but could not quell their souls. 

The fidelity of the Confederate captive is 
without a parallel in human history. At 
any hour of any day freedom was his on 
the simple condition of swearing allegiance 
to the "Government of the United States." 

But what was the mood of this Southern 
soldier — this scion of a race of freemen — 
this bold spirit who under duress "dies as 
the caged eagle dies ; " what was his mood 
of mind while he was being dragged " to 
Lee's army in chains?" Where then were 
beak and claw and strength of wing? And 
with what sort of thrusting instrument did 
the "shirking slave-owners" "thrust him 
under fire?" And how many chained eagles 
could one thruster thrust forward at a time? 
Or rather, perhaps, how many " shirking 
slave-holders" would be required to "thrust 
under fire " a single eagle, chained or un- 
chained ? 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 37 

And is not the South entitled to some 
off-set against the North on the score of 
this special cause of death? Was it only on 
one side that the vital spark was quenched 
by loss of liberty? Did no imprisoned 
Northern soldier " die as the caged eagle 
dies?" Would each and all have been 
happy and contented if "well fed" and 
sheltered from "hardship?" Was it the 
Southern soldier alone who had none but 
moral griefs, while the Northern soldier 
had only material ones? And must indeed 
these mixed and incongruous absurdities be 
blindty accepted as rational statements lest 
the " sacred interests of a broad and gen- 
erous patriotism" be impaired? 

Mr. Goldwin Smith's argument is that 
the Southern captive, amid boundless abund- 
ance, pined and died, j^earning for liberty, 
while the imprisoned Northerner had no 
thought or care beyond his need of food 
and shelter, thus proving the Southerner to 



38 UNITED STATES " HISTOEY " AS THE 

have been of the earth earth}^, and the 
Northerner to have been spiritual in a 
super-subUmated degree ! 

It seems a httle hard on tiie nniUumi- 
nated that they should be expected to digest 
this sort of reasoning. Yet perhaps we 
ought to take such logic as we can get, and 
be thankful for it, inasmuch as the sacred 
right of might is hard to vindicate unless 
facts can be forced into harmony with the 
general h3^pothesis that the South is a region 
of savagery while the North is a garden 
spot of all the christian virtues. 

Here are a few more extracts from this 
"latest and best" of American histories: 

*'It was a contest," says Mr. Goldwin 
Smith, " between an iron despotism " on the 
one hand and "spontaneous zeal" on the 
other. 

"The South," continues the author, 
"almost from the first, resorted to conscrip- 
tion, ruthlessly enforced by the severest 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 39 

penalties," a course " from which Northern 
democracy shrank." 

"The South," he declares, " had the supe- 
riority of force which autocracy lends to 
war," while "the North had the advantage 
of the unforced efforts and sacrifices which 
free patriotism makes." 

And as conclusive proof of the invinci- 
ble strength which "spontaneous zeal" and 
the " unforced efforts " of " free patriotism " 
confer upon a "popular government" Mr. 
Goldwin Smith might aptly have called at- 
tention to the memorable interview between 
the British Minister and the Hon. William 
H. Seward: 

"I can touch a bell at my right hand," 
said the Secretary of State, "and order the 
arrest of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch the 
bell again, and order the arrest of a citizen 
of New York. . Can Queen Victoria do as 
much?" 

Lord Lyons, with closed eyes, slowly and 



40 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

silently shook his head. Yet he might have 
replied: "It is true, Mr. Secretary, that my 
sovereign, in this our modern age, has not 
the authority which you so justly claim; 
nor indeed had his puissant majesty, George 
the Third; yet I doubt not that some such 
proof of power might have been given in 
the good old days of Henry the Eighth." 



The liberty of the press is a subject on 
which our author grows eloquent — holding 
that in the North it was absolutely free, 
while in the South it was but " a sounding- 
board to register the decrees of tyranny." 
On topics of this class it is really difficult 
to judge whether or not Mr. Gold win Smith 
it writing in good faith. The feeling con- 
stantly arises that there is a sly sarcasm, a 
lurking irony in his praises of the North. 
In the blandest manner he lays down broad 
propositions which are not only destitute of 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 41 

truth but which are specifically and in detail 
the exact reverse of truth. 

Every Northern man who lived through 
the war knows that under the Lincoln gov- 
ernment there was no such thing as free- 
dom of the press. It is true that before 
mobbing or destroying that palladium of 
liberty the "truly loyal" would lash them- 
selves into a state of moral exaltation by 
denouncing as "rebel sympathisers" all who 
dared to remind them of their covenanted 
obligations — all who dared to quote the 
Declaration of Independence, or appeal to 
the Constitution of the United States. And 
so, from the great cities on the Atlantic 
coast to the little villages on the Western 
frontier, every opponent of radicalism, every 
supporter of Statehood, every democratic 
editor who failed to raise the abject squeak 
that he was "a war-democrat" was forth- 
with denounced as an " enemy to free 
institutions," and patriotically raided, robbed, 



42 UNITED STATES ''hISTOEY" AS THE 

muzzled and terrorized until crushed out of 
existence or brought into a loyal frame of 
mind. 

Now turn to the South. During the 
whole life of the Confederacy her press was 
absolutely free. Even when confronted by 
the united hosts of Europe, Asia, and 
Africa — even when beset- by tenfold num- 
bers and b}^ resources mounting up to ten 
times ten — from the beginning to the end — 
through all mutations of victory or defeat 
— no matter what her power or what her 
needs, the Confederate government, by spe- 
cial enactment, gave absolute exemption 
from military service to every individual 
who was connected with her newspaper 
press. 

"A sounding board," indeed! Read the 
editorials of the chief newspaper published 
at her capital — the editorials of the Rich- 
mond Examiner. They have been repub- 
lished in book form since the war and may 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 43 

be easily obtained. The editor was John 
M. Daniel — a man of note — able, haughty, 
resolute; a recluse bitter with the bitterness 
of misanthropy yet devoured by an insati- 
able ambition. Passionately pleading for a 
better equipment in the field, and disgusted 
with the complacent self-sufficiency of the 
war office, he assailed the sanctities of that 
bureau, and thence drifted into antagonism 
with Mr. Davis' entire administration. The 
breach was never healed, and from the 
beginning to the end of the war he searched 
out and gave to open day every blot and 
every error of every department of the 
Confederate government. Never since the 
days of Sir Philip Francis had mortal hand 
grasped a more trenchant pen, and never 
was the work of a single pen fraught with 
more momentous consequences. Under the 
Lincoln despotism a writer such as Daniel 
could not have held his liberty for an hour. 
So much for the "autocracy" which lent 



44 UNITED STATES " HISTOEY " AS THE 

the South her '' superiority in war." So 
much for the " iron despotism " which, not- 
withstanding autocracy, was overthrown by 
the " spontaneous zeal " of the North ! 

Does not Mr. Goldwin Smith know that 
he is giving his readers either pointless sar- 
casm or utter rubbish ? Does he not know 
that the facts are notoriously and demon- 
strably the exact reverse of what he states 
them to be? 

Again, the author says that "the South, 
almost from the first, resorted to conscrip- 
tion, ruthlessly enforced by the severest 
penalties," a course " from which Northern 
democracy shrank." 

Does he not know that the Northern con- 
scription was as savage and remorseless as 
that of the invaded country was orderly 
and mild? Does he not know that what 
the "spontaneous" patriots really "shrank" 
from was the decoys and trepanners who 
filled the union-saving ranks at so much 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 45 

per union-saver? Does he not know that 
on a single occasion, in the streets of a 
single Northern city, more than a thousand 
recusant patriots were shot down like mad 
dogs while flying in terror before the 
crimps and kidnappers and press-gangs of 
the Lincoln government? 

But we bid adieu to Mr. Goldwin Smith. 
He, in turn, is to be set aside. He is alto- 
gether too mild a mannered man to meet 
present demands. His vituperation of the 
" rebels " falls short in acrimony, wdiile his 
adulation of the yankees lacks the required 
unction. ("Rebel" and "Yankee" — how 
pat as echo the one term calls forth the 
other.") 

The history committee of the Grand 
Army of the Republic seems to have finally 
settled on a definite plan. And the plan in 
some respects is so full of promise that it 
will doubtle'ss be adopted. The aim is two- 



46 UNITED STATES "hISTOEY" AS THE 

fold — to render the rebel more odious than 
history has thus far depicted him, and at 
the same time to put the yankee in such a 
position that the world will be compelled 
to admire him! 

For the attainment of so patriotic an end 
surely nothing more should be needed than 
the Grand Army's simple requisition. The 
needful appropriation might be graced by a 
paean or two to the old flag, and all should 
go smoothly. Else, what is the good of 
victory and victory's lawful fruits? — fame, 
wealth, honor, reputation, and full control 
of "history's purchased page?" 

The proposed plan is to be official, govern- 
mental, authoritative. The required history 
is to be written by a duly appointed and 
truly loyal personage who is to gather his 
war material solely from the "dispatches" 
on file at Washington. But right there, we 
apprehend, will be found the fl}^ in the 
ointment. 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 47 

Think of it. History by the transcrip- 
tion of yankee dispatches! Bewildering 
dispatches ! Unhappy historian ! — the wings 
of his imagination close clipped, and him- 
self bound by both literary and patriotic 
obligation to harmonize with the actual 
situation, and with one another, the varied 
dispatches of commanders who never, no 
"never misled the people by publishing 
false news of military successes ! " 

Take a handful of the most important 
dispatches of the war. Or, still better, take 
the chief dispatches of the Grand Army's 
chosen heroes — the radical republican gen- 
erals, the men of immaculate loyalty, the 
gleaming meteors of war — Benjamin Butler, 
Banks, Hooker, Pope, O. O. Howard. 

Turn to Hooker's dispatch when he had 
Lee "at his mercy:" "The rebels must 
attack us in our chosen position, or in- 
gloriously fly ! " The rebels did not fly, 
but they attacked; whereupon the gallant 



48 UNITED STATES 

corps of 0. O. Howard marched out of 
history with unexampled alacrity, while the 
exultant dispatch-bearer spurred hard for 
Washington with Stonewall's troopers at his 
heels ! 

Butler's dispatches are a vibrating note 
of triumph from Big Bethel in '61 to Ber- 
muda Hundred in '64. The former affair 
was really a drawn battle, the two wings of 
his army having lost their way, until they 
at length collided, whereupon they fired into 
each other until mutually satisfied, and 
then simultaneousl}' retired. Butler claimed 
it as a double victory, but history has not 
allowed the claim. In his Bermuda cam- 
paign he announced his position as being 
"impregnable against any numbers which 
the rebels might bring against him." A 
narrow space between the rivers was the 
only point of entrance or exit. So Beaure- 
gard with a handful of troops turned the 
position against him, or " bottled him up," 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 49 

as Grant expressed it, and Butler, as a war- 
rior, was heard from no more. 

General Banks was pre-eminently distin- 
guished as a dispatch writer, whether waging 
war amid the cotton bales of the Red River 
or " chasing the rebels " in the Valley of 
Virginia. But his campaigns were peculiar, 
being modeled on the maritime principle of 
fighting in a circle, so that whenever he 
overtook the rebels he was pretty sure to 
find them busy among his supply trains. 
The hungry Confederates held him in affec- 
tionate regard, and generally spoke of him 
as " Old Stonewall's Commissary," altho in 
his dispatches he modestly forbore to men- 
tion the rank they gave him. 

General Pope was also famous for his 
dispatches, and never were those dispatches 
more aglow with victory than whilst he was 
being cuffed and cudgeled from the banks 
of the Rappahannock to the walls of Wash- 
ington. At the very moment that he was 



50 UNITED STATES " HISTOKY " AS THE 

declaring the rebels to be in headlong flight, 
the General-in-Chief, Halleck, frantic with 
terror, was imploring McClellan to force his 
marches and save the Capital ! 

Truly, this official history will be worth 
the waiting for; particularly as the historian 
is to be put under orders to arrange the 
dispatches "patriotically," — that is, in such 
shape as to debase the rebel and exalt the 
yankee ! 

And yet this subject has its sad side too. 
The "History" will have its vogue, ever}'-- 
body will want to read it, but during that 
lively period what will the poor comic 
papers do? 

Those friends of the Grand Army who 
have a sense of humor are apprehensive 
that that patriotic body is in danger of 
being laughed out of existence. And in 
this emergency it is proposed to enlarge 
the powers of Government so that a new 
code of laws may be enacted — laws which 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 51 

sliall make it a penal offence to speak with 
levity of patriotic persons, or to utter re- 
proachful or shghting or irreverent words 
when speaking of any project which enjoys 
the support of "loyal" men. A "truthful 
history" is to be ordered "by act of Con- 
gress," and " publishers are to be fined and 
imprisoned" if they "issue works" which 
are calculated "to wrongly impress the 
minds of the growing generation regarding 
the Rebellion." 

Considered as aji emanation of the Puri- 
tan spirit, all this is perfectly logical. He 
cares not who fights his battles so that he 
alone is left to record them. That has 
always been a Puritan prerogative, and he 
does not propose to abandon it. He has 
laid aside his steeple hat and his sour 
visage and his sad-colored raiment, but at 
bottom he is the same old Puritan. He has 
dropped his sanctimonious snuffle and the 
upward turning of his eyes because he 



52 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

began to perceive that those outward signs 
of inward grace were putting the unregene- 
rate on their guard against him. But he 
is still the genuine article. A Pharisee 
always, he is not to be judged by any 
common standard ; for a being of his lofty 
pretentions, if not incomparably better than 
other men, is bound to be immeasurably 
worse. Moving craftily to his ends, now 
with a flash of simulated zeal and anon 
with a placid saintliness, but always disguis- 
ing his tyranny and greed by special claims 
to holiness, he is to-day the same intrusive 
meddler, with the same inborn passion for 
regulating other peoples' affairs, that he was 
when England vomited him forth to the 
Continent and when the Continent in turn 
spewed him to the shores of the New 
World. 

Self-stjded as the apostle of liberty, he 
has ever claimed for himself the liberty of 
persecuting all who presumed to differ from 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 53 

him. Self-appointed as the champion of 
unity and harmon}^ he has carried discord 
into every land that his foot has smitten. 
Exalting himself as the defender of freedom 
of thought, his favorite practice has been to 
muzzle the press and to adjourn legislatures 
with the sword. Vaunting himself as the 
only true disciple of the living God, he has 
done more to bring sacred things into 
disrepute than has been accomplished by 
all the apostates of all the ages, from 
Judas Iscariot to Robert G. Ingersoll. Born 
in revolt against law and order — breeding 
schism in the Church and faction in the 
State — seceding from every organization to 
which he had pledged fidelity — nullifying 
all law, human and divine, which lacked 
the seal of his approval — evermore setting 
up what he calls his conscience against the 
most august of constituted authorities and 
the most sacred of covenanted obligations, 
he yet has the impregnable conceit to pose 



54 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

himself in the world's eye as the only 
surviving specimen of political or moral 
worth. 

On two occasions he has been clothed, 
for a brief period, with absolute power, 
and in each instance he taught his victims 
what ''persecution" really meant. In the 
tide of time, men have been governed in 
many ways — by councils and oligarchies — 
by prophets, priests and kings — by the 
despotism of tyrants and the despotism of 
mobs — by fools and philosophers — by learned 
sages and by savage chieftains — but they 
knew not the meaning of tyranny until 
they fell under the Puritan dominion, and 
learned what it was to be governed by 
a brood of world-regenerating saints and 
vanity-inspired busybodies. 

"Be you a witch?" roared the embodied 
majesty of Massachusetts to a trembling 
paralytic. 

"No, your honor," was the reply. 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 55 

"Officer," said the Court, "take her away 
and pull out her toe-nails with a pair of 
hot pincers, and then see w^hat she says; 
for verily it is written that 'thou shalt not 
suffer a witch to live ! '" 

Thus with the act of cruelty goes ever 
the perverted text. 

"We were an hungered, and the savages 
had much store of corn, and many garments 
made of the skins of beasts, and it came to 
pass that we went forth and fell upon them, 
smiting them hip and thigh, even with the 
knife of Ehud and the hammer of Jael, 
crying aloud and sparing not, and their 
spoil became an heritage unto us, even unto 
us and our children." 

This precious screed, which serves its 
turn in sanctifying robbery and murder, is 
in fair accord with that practical and profit- 
able tenet which has so often been to him 
a rule of action: "Thou hast said in Thy 
Word that 'unto the saints should be given 



56 UNITED STATES " HISTORY " AS THE 

the earth and the fuhiess thereof/ and verily 
we are the saints." 

That the press should be silenced at his 
bidding, that courts should be reconstructed 
and constitutions tossed aside, is simply a 
necessity of the situation. The men of 
Belial must be put down. 

Under ordinary circumstances there should 
seem to be no particular harm in men's 
speaking of facts which ,they had witnessed, 
or in describing events in which they had 
participated, or in recording the history 
which they had made. 

But the Puritan has always been a law 
unto himself, and by virtue of his "supe- 
rior toleration " he has now become a law 
unto others. Moreover being guided by 
that inner light which shines for him alone, 
there must be no appeal from the justice 
of his judgments or the righteousness of 
his decrees. 

The Puritan heretofore has made some 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 57 

little amends by furnishing to mankind an 
enduring target for scorn and mirth and 
derision. But now we are to be deprived 
of even that slight compensation — the poor 
privilege of laughing at him. It is too bad ! 

It is related of the Roman tyrant, Aure- 
lius Commodus, that, fired by martial ardor, 
"he entered the arena, sword in hand, 
against a wretched gladiator who was armed 
only with a foil of lead, and that after 
shedding the blood of his helpless victim, 
he struck medals to commemorate the in- 
glorious victory." 

That fame at any price was precious in 
the sight of Aurelius is sufficiently evident, 
yet we nowhere read that he forbade his 
people to laugh or weep or jibe at his 
novel way of attaining it. 



On the general subject of State Sover- 
eignty, and its relation to secession and 



58 UNITED STATES "hISTOKY" AS THE 

nullification, it is well enough to set down 
a few facts which the coming history will 
doubtless fail to remember And if the 
facts seem "calculated to impress wrongly 
the minds of the growing generation " why 
" so much the worse for the facts." 

That sterling patriot and life-long Unionist, 
John Janney, of Loudoun county, was chosen 
President of the Peace Convention of 1861. 
On being twitted by a youthful delegate 
for his State Sovereignty tendencies, the 
old patriarch said: "Disunion would be the 
greatest calamity that could befall our State; 
but, sir, secession is her lawful right, and 
she alone must determine the expediency 
of exercising it." * * ""' " Virginia, sir, 
is to-day a free and sovereign State; and 
she was a nation one hundred and eighty 
years before the Union was born." 

This principle of Statehood had been 
everywhere recognized by Americans up to 
the time of the war, and nowhere more 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 59 

persistently than by the people of Massa- 
chusetts and the New England States. 

In her convention of 1780 Massachusetts 
declared that her people had the sole and 
exclusive right of governing themselves as 
a free, sovereign, and independent State, 
and that they, and they alone, had the 
indefeasible right to institute, reform, alter 
or totally change that government whenever 
their happiness or welfare might seem to 
require it. 

Thirteen years later, when war with Great 
Britain seemed almost unavoidable, the New 
Englanders put forth Hon. Timothy Dwight 
as their spokesman, and through him de- 
clared that they would have no part or lot in 
such a war, and sooner than have it forced 
upon them they would go out of the Union. 

So, too, when the Louisiana purchase 
was under discussion. Massachusetts bit- 
terly opposed it and threatened to exercise 
what she called her "unquestioned right of 



60 UNITED STATES "hISTOKY" AS THE 

secession " if the measure should be per- 
sisted in. Senator George Cabot was the 
leader on that occasion. 

Indeed, from the very beginning, the 
New England States left nothing untried 
to prevent the Southward growth of our 
country. The yankee, driven by rigor of 
climate and sterility of soil to prey upon 
his more favored neighbors, watched with 
ceaseless jealousy the special privileges 
which his astuteness had obtained. He 
feared to lose his fishing bounties, his coast- 
defence-and internal-improvement-appropria- 
tions, and most of all he dreaded an 
abatement of the tariff tax, which enriched 
him at the public cost. In the words of 
Bancroft, "An ineradicable dread of the 
coming power of the Southwest lurked in 
New England, especially in Massachusetts." 
And if those States could have had their 
way, the Mississippi river would still be 
our western frontier. 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 61 

Senator Pickering, also of Massachusetts, 
was another distinguished secessionist. He 
did not like Mr. Jefferson's administra- 
tion at all. There was something about it 
which he said was '' not congenial " to his 
feelings or the feelings of New England. 
So he proposed a general dissolution of the 
Union with a view to the formation of a 
Northern Confederacy. The scheme was 
favored by New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and 
Vermont, yet it was deemed imprudent to 
act without the alliance of New York, who 
was promised a dominant influence in the 
new league. But New York declined with 
thanks and the project fell through. 

In 1804 the Legislature of Massachusetts 
asserted and defined the principle of seces- 
sion by the following enactment: "That the 
annexation of Louisiana to the Union tran- 
scends the constitutional power of the 
Government of the United States. It forms 



62 UNITED STATES HISTORY" AS THE 

a new Confederacy, to which the States 
united by the former compact are not 
bound 'to adhere." 

In the debate on the bill for the admis- 
sion of Louisiana, the representative of 
Massachusetts, Hon. Josiah Quincy, said: 
''If the bill passes, it is my deliberate 
judgment that it is virtually a dissolution 
of the Union; that it will free the States 
from their moral obligation; and, as it will 
be the right of all, so it will be the duty of 
some, definitely to prepare for a separation 
— amicably if they can, violently if they 
must." At this conjuncture a Southern 
member raised the point that "the sugges- 
tion of a dissolution of the Union was out 
of order;" but, on appeal, the House sus- 
tained Mr. Quincy, who, in an elaborate 
argument, vindicated the rightfulness of 
secession, saying, among other things: "Is 
there a principle of public law better settled 
or more conformable to the plainest sugges- 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 63 

tions of reason than that the violation of 
a contract by one of the parties may be 
considered as exempting the other from its 
obhgations? Suppose in private hfe thirteen 
form a partnership, and ten of them under- 
take to admit a new partner without the 
concurrence of the other three, would it not 
be at their option to abandon the partner- 
ship, after so palpable an infringement of 
their rights?" 

This reasoning goes to the heart of the 
matter. It asserts that the States are inde- 
pendent political organisms — or rather that 
they were so in those ante-bellum days — 
and that all the massed power of majorities 
could not drag down the principle of 
sovereignty, altho that principle might be 
enthroned in but a single State. 

In 1812 Massachusetts and Connecticut 
refused to allow their militia to be sent 
beyond their State lines, and on being left 
to their own devices they quarrelled with 



64 UNITED STATES '' HISTORY" AS THE 

the Administration for refusing to pay them 
for making a local defence on their own 
account. Meantime the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts occupied himself in calling a public 
fast-day for deploring the war against a 
nation which had long been the "bulwark 
of the religion we profess." The good old 
town of Plymouth, having risen from its 
knees, presently got into a muscular mood, 
and having captured one of the Congress- 
man who voted for the war, forthwith gave 
a free exhibition of their untrammelled 
liberty by "kicking him through the town." 
Finally the Supreme Court of Massachu- 
setts poured oil on the troubled waters by 
deciding that neither Congress nor the 
President had anything to do with the State 
forces, but that the Governor was the man. 
So the Governor settled the matter by 
refusing the request of the President for 
her quota of troops, and the Massachusetts 
House of Representatives clinched the whole 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 65 

subject by declaring the war to be unholy, 
and begging the people to do what they 
could to thwart it. 

In short, on all occasions of domestic • 
disquiet or foreign war the history of New 
England has been a history of revolt, and 
threatened separation, and nullification, and 
secession, and persistent defiance of the 
authority of Congress and the Federal 
Courts. 

Jefferson's Embargo was never really tried, 
because the New England States threatened 
to secede if its provisions should be carried 
out, and it was accordingly repealed in the 
vain hope of appeasing them. 

But it was on the actual breaking out of 
hostilities that New England showed the 
real quality of her "devotion to the Union." 
She not only did her best to nullify every 
law passed by Congress for raising men 
and money, but some of "her best citizens" 
intrigued with British agents for an alliance 



66 UNITED STATES " HISTOEY " AS THE 

with Canada, while others hung out signal 
lights to enable the enemy's fleet to capture 
our disabled cruisers — deeds which would 
have richly deserved the halter if committed 
by ordinary mortals, but which won for 
them the enthusiastic plaudits of their kind. 
That the Hartford Convention of 1814 was 
not siiTiply a secession but a treasonable 
body admits of no rational doubt. The 
object was not merely to destroy the Union, 
but to enleague the revolted States with 
Great Britain, so that the new Confederacy 
and its ally might be in a position to 
subjugate the adhering States. The present 
race of New England apologists pretend 
that the Convention was "merely an assem- 
blage of some of the Federal leaders," but 
the plain facts of history discredit their 
claim. The delegates from Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, and Massachusetts were regu- 
larly elected by the Legislatures of those 
States, and constituted in every respect an 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 67 

official body acting in a representative 
capacity. Their deliberations were held in 
secret, and no full account of their pro- 
ceedings has ever been published, but they 
publicly announced their adherence to the 
doctrine of State Sovereignty, full and 
absolute, declaring that: "When emergencies 
occur which are either beyond the reach of 
judicial tribunals or too pressing to admit 
of delay incident to their forms. States 
which have no common umpire must be 
their own judges and execute their own 
decisions." 

In 1861 the Southern people, weary of 
discord, exercised this sovereign right. They 
withdrew from their restless and conten- 
tious neighbors, and formed a more harmo- 
nious Union among themselves, asking only 
to be let alone. The " emergency " which 
confronted them was the enthronement of 
a hostile and revolutionary faction — a fac- 



68 UNITED STATES " HISTOEY " AS THE 

tion which at a fatal moment had come 
into power through a triple division among 
the law-abiding classes. 

These new rulers had chiefly distinguished 
themselves as the enemies of existing insti- 
tutions — their political and social creed 
being, in effect, "Whatever is, is wrong." 
They were fond of execrating the Union as 
" a league with hell," and denouncing the 
Constitution as "a covenant with death." 
They derided the highest courts of the 
land as " crimping houses of iniquity," and 
villified the old flag as "a flaunting lie!" 

But on coming into power they threw 
off all disguise, and shamelessly started a 
war of conquest in pretended defence of 
the very principles and symbols which they 
had so bitterly reviled. 

With paralyzing logic they mutilated the 
States on the plea that the States were 
"indestructible;" they debarred them from 
the Union while declaring the Union to 



YANKEE MAKES AND TAKES IT. 69 

be "indissoluble," and they tore the Consti- 
tution to tatters while pretending that 
they were the only class who reverenced 
its "inviolability." Having thus approved 
themselves the only true champions of "the 
sacred principle of government by consent," 
they rounded out their perfect work by 
converting the States into satrapies, and 
holding them under bayonet rule until the 
conquered peoples consented to ratify the 
whole of their rump performances. No 
wonder they are yearning for a historian 
of their own! — no wonder they are drafting 
laws to give that historian sole control of 
the facts! 

As for the South, she accepted war when 
no other recourse was left her. And she 
has borne its results, bitter tho they have 
been, with the serenity of fortitude and the 
dignity of silence. Conscious of rectitude 
in aim and deed, she has been willing to 
leave her cause to the tribunal of posterity. 



70 UNITED STATES "HISTORY." 

Like the princess in the Eastern stor}^, she 
has held her course, unshaken by clamor, 
unmoved by taunts and sneers, and without 
one backward glance has swept on toward 
the Golden Fountain of the Future. She 
has been content to leave her name and 
memory "to men's charitable speeches, to 
foreign nations and the next age." She 
frankly concedes that under the new Union, 
and the revised Constitution, and the im- 
proved laws, and the generally amended 
polity, there may have been innovations 
with which she has not kept pace, and 
which she does not fully comprehend. But 
when she is threatened with pains and 
penalties for presuming to relate to her 
own children the simple annals of her life, 
she believes that it is fairly within her 
right to enter a mild and respectful yet 
earnest protest. 



CRITICISMS 



— ON 

A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY 



I2ino. ; cloth; pp. 172; Price $1.00 

Published by Cussons, May & Co., Inc., Glen Allen, Va. 



From The Picayune, New Orleans, La. 

The author is a veteran of the Confederacy and for 
some time served as Grand Commander of the veteran 
association in Virginia He was made chairman of the 
History Committee of that organization, and for it made 
an examination of the school books su^^plied to the 
Southern children, particularly with reference to their 
treatment of the civil war. The results of this inquiry 
appear in this book, which contains a scathing arraign- 
ment of several popular text-books, particularly of Prof. 
Goldwin Smith's work. In addition to the essays and 
addresses on this subject, the author includes a speech 
on the " treachery " of the Indians. Mr. Cussons is a 



74 PKESS COMMENTS ON 

polished and vigorous writer, and his opinions cannot 
fail to awaken a responsive thrill in the heart of every 
candid reader. 



From T}iE Bookman, London. 

There is no doubt as to Captain Cussons' vigour and 
directness of speech, nor much as to his just cause. As 
Past Grand Commander of the Confederate Veterans of 
Virginia he protests, very rightly, against the misrep- 
resentations of the attitude of the South in the great 
war which pass current as history, and has also some 
forcible words to say "On Granting Forgiveness Before 
it is Asked," and "On the 'Treachery' of the American 
Indian." His contentions are worth the notice of all 
who feel that what everybody says is not always, in 
every respect, right. 



From the Saiurday Re\iew, London. 

* * * The author's remarks on the " Treachery " 
of the American Indian will shed a flood of light on 
the "tender mercies" of the white man. Sitting Bull, 
we are reminded, only trusted the United States once, 
and then the American seized the opportunity to mur- 
der him. "And the Great White Chief (our late worthy 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 75 

President Mr. Benjamin Harrison) congratulated the 
country on this achievement, and assured us that the 
Indian Question was a simple matter now that Sitting 
Bull had been put out of the way." " Is it to this," 
asks Mr. Cussons, " that our vaunted civilization has 
brought us?" 



From The Outlook, London. 

* * * The author, a veteran of the Civil War, 
is well worth studying. The " current history " he re- 
views is that produced by Mr. Goldwin Smith and the 
historians of the North, whose utter lack of chivalry he 
eloquently and scathingly rebukes. Very interesting is 
a chapter devoted to the brutal and hypocritical war 
of extermination which is rapidly extinguishing the Red 
Indian. 



From The Literary World, London. 

This is a spirited attempt to defend the traditions 
of the Southern States of the Union from the trenchant 
pen of Prof. Goldwin Smith and the other historians, 
who have assumed that the Northerners had all the 
justice, as well as most of the strength, on their side in 
the war of the Pievolution. Colonel Cussons, himself. 



76 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

fought in the war, and wielded a good sword if he were 
as formidable a soldier as he proves himself a contro- 
versialist. * * * The chapter on the Eed Man is an 
eloquent plea for the just treatment of a barbarian foe. 



From Thk Times, Stewartsville, Minn. 

* * * It is a very interesting book, well written, 
and presents the subject in a very different light from 
that commonly accepted in the North. We believe the 
cause of truth and justice would be well served if that 
book were widely read. The ignorance of the North 
regarding the real situation in the South, and of the 
standpoints of Southern action is surprising, and the 
narrow bitterness of sectional spirit so prevalent is Hue 
to ignorance of both principles and facts. 



From Woman's Work, Montgomery, Ala. 

"A Glance at Current History." — We have re- 
ceived from the press of Cussons, May & Co., Glen 
Allen, Va., a volume bearing the above title. Its author, 
Colonel John Cussons, wields his pen with the dash, 
force, and precision with which he bore arms in the 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 77 

war of the Southern Confederacy. Indeed it was Col- 
onel Cussons who made, by one of the essays collected in 
this book, the first brilliant and effective sortie against 
false histories in Virginia schools; and he has main- 
tained the struggle with a persistence worthy of him 
and of his cause. That he succeeded will be no wonder 
to any one who reads "A Glance at Cui-rent History." 
That his success will be an inspiration to others is sui'e, 
and his book will point the way to all who like him, 
in writing and fighting and daily doing, live the words: 
" Mine honor is mv life." 



From The Scotsman, Edinburgh, Scotland. 

From Messrs Cussons, May & Co., Glen Allen, Va., 
comes a book of miscellaneous addresses and other occa- 
sional pieces by Colonel John Cussons, a Confederate 
soldier, who is well known and eagerly listened to in 
his own State as a defender of the Southern ideas. It 
takes its title from its principal essay, "A Glance at 
Current History," which defends the South against the 
views rendered current by such orthodox histories as 
Professor Goldwin Smith's, and contends with force that 
the Southerners should have their children taught his- 
tory on quite different lines. The remaining papers are 



78 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

addresses delivered by Colonel Cussons on such occasions 
as the presentation to the Confederate Museum of a 
portrait of Jefferson Davis. The interest of the book 
is mainly local to Virginia, but its vigorous eloquence 
makes it stimulating reading for any one. 



From the Gazette, Terre Haute, Ind. 

* * * The writer served through the war on the 
Confederate side, doing his duty as he saw it, until the 
end of the conflict. And now, though persuaded that 
American greatness can be best achieved under one 
flag, he insists that "a true spirit of national unity will 
never be attained by a distortion of historic truths." 
His contention is that such distortion has been sedu- 
lously pursued, with the scarcely disguised purpose of 
giving future generations a false notion of the honesty 
and honor of the people of the South. His aim is to 
present the Southern view of the men and issues of 
the period of the civil war. In the six papers and 
addresses which constitute the book the author corrects 
what he believes to be errors in the historical record 
of the country as commonly accepted. He denounces 
the treatment of the American Indian, and is of the 
opinion that a mistake has been made in use of text- 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 79 

books which are tinged with sectional prejudice and 
cause Northern school children to cherish biased opinions 
regarding the people of the South. The work apart 
from any intrinsic interest it may have, throws some 
light on the conditions of sentiment at the present 
time among the officers who took a prominent part in 
the Confederate armies, and who, while they now stand 
firmly for a united nation, still feel that it is not in 
human nature that they should look upon the civil war 
with quite the same feelings as those of their fellow- 
countrymen who were on the other side. The book is 
written in an earnest and honest spirit with the manly 
purpose of vindicating the courage and the conscience 
of his people and is deserving of the candid and careful 
consideration of the Amei'ican people as a whole. It 
is especially deserving of the attention of the people of 
the North., who are apt, by much reading and hearing 
of only one side to get a mistaken or distorted impres- 
sion of a great epoch in the nation's history. 



From The Sun, Baltimore, Md. 

* * * The writer's attack on Goldwin Smith's 
histories, as regards the South, is keen and vehement in 
"A Glance at Current History." An attack is also 



»U PRESS COMMENTS ON 

made with force on " History as Taught in Onr Schools." 
The remaining papers are " On the Outworn Theory of 
Government by Consent," " On Granting Forgiveness 
Before It is Asked," and on "The 'Treachery' of the 
American Indian." 



PVom the Pail Mall Gazette, London. 

A Plea for Historical Fair Play. — It appears the 
school histories of the United States are badly in need 
of revision. Last year they were condemned by Anglo- 
Americans for their bias against England ; now comes 
a bitter cry from the South that the history of the War 
of Secession has been grossly doctored by the Federalist 
Educationists. Things certainly have come to a pretty 
pass when a small child can say to its grandfather, " I 
don't care, grandpa, if you were an old rebel ; I love 
yon." Captain Cussons' indignant appeal for impartiality 
seems all too well-timed, and there is much truth in his 
contention that the Puritanical North has done its best 
to dishonour with the pen those whom it defeated with 
the sword. Certainly the trouncing he administers to 
Professor Goldwin Smith seems thoroughly well merited, 
though he somewhat spoils his case by his over-exuberant 
rhetoric. All the same, we .sympathize with the fierce 
indignation of the writer at seeing the cause for which 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 81 

he fought and bled trailed in the dust and its ideals 
derided. 

For the South did stand for a great deal more than 
Northern writers are willing to admit. The wish of 
perpetuating slavery may have persuaded those of the 
baser sort, but the better men were actuated by the 
desire to uphold freedom, the freedom of sovereign States 
to withdraw from a partnership in which the majority 
of the partners were trying to oppress the minority. 
Granted that the better cause won — Providence, we 
know, is generally on the side of the big battalions — no 
one can help sympathizing with the South. It was the 
blood of the country against the money, and as in the 
struggle between Cavalier and Roundhead, "it was the 
last sou of the trader that won." Still, the loss the 
South sustained was the loss to all America of many 
aristocratic instincts of the better sort that she may one 
day have to regret. The ruin of the Virginian gentle- 
men from whose ranks Washington sprang means the 
loss of much precious tradition in manners and morals. 
No wonder Captain Cussons hopes that from this noble 
wreckage much may yet be rescued and preserved in 
the pages of an impartial history. 

The last article in the book deals with the Indian 
question from the Indian point of view. The Indian 
has been, in a way, to America what Ireland has been 



82 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

to England, Alsace to Germany, and Poland to Russia, 
a sort of skeleton in the national closet. Captain Cus- 
sons had little difficulty in showing that if the Redskin 
is not the noble savage that Fenimore Cooper and his 
tribe loved to depict, it is still a gross libel on the race 
to say, " There is no good Indian but a dead Indian." 
In fact, the chapter of American history that deals with 
the Indian is certainly the one that honest Americans 
have least to be proud of. 



From Southern History Association, Washington, D. C. 

* * * There is a field for a new school of historians 
in this country, men that can be accurate and interesting 
at the same time. This need is really the prompting 
spirit of Mr. John Cussons' utterance. He vigorously 
stands up for a faithful adherence to truth in repro- 
ducing the past. He urges this not only with regard 
to the mighty chasm behind us but with regard to our 
treatment of the Indians. Naturally a large proportion 
of his pages deal with what he considers misrepresen- 
tation of the South and considerable attention does he 
give to Goldwin Smith's History of the United States. 
The quotations from this work would indicate that in 
his hunger to be bold and pictures-que, Prof. Smith 
was as reckless and sweeping in his statements as the 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 83 

prophet was when lie said that all Cretians were liars. 
Certainly some of Goldwin Smith's views as shown in 
this volume are so utterly at variance with facts that 
an American can only treat them with the good humor 
that he bestows on Brother Jasper when he solemnly 
preached that "the sun do move." Caustic comment 
does Mr. Cussons make on the attitude of many of our 
historical text books in dealing with slavery and leading 
events of the civil struggle. He closes with a chapter 
of severe strictures on our traditional denunciations of 
the Indians as "treacherous" when they were only loyal 
to their interest in using their best means of warfare. 
One seeming defect in the book should not have been 
allowed by a man of Mr. Cussons' independence and 
breadth. Notwithstanding his passionate demand for 
truth he has confined himself to one side only, and this 
goddess is not to be wooed and won by that method. 
Sectional bias and partisan coloring must be firmly 
corrected by devoted friends on each side. This rigid 
temper and luminous charity would soon bring us into 
the pure, white light. 

[SouTHEEN History Association assumes 
equality of influence between the Rev€»*end 
John Jasper and Professor Goldwin Smith — 
between the poor darkey who honestly 



84 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

believes that " the sun do move " and one 
of the ablest and most dangerous writers 
that ever perverted history by a systematic 
distortion of facts. Each may be left to 
neglectful silence, thinks Southern History 
Association. Yet surely it should seem 
that the most virulent traducer of the South 
could ask for nothing more than this — the 
privilege of freely diffusing his slanders 
without exposure or rebuke. 

We must bear in mind that it is not to 
the wise and prudent that an appeal for 
justice need be made. The learned world 
knew thirty years ago, as it knows to-day, 
that the North wrongfully forced the South 
to a rightful defence ; that the South stood 
clearly within her institutional rights; that 
"the North fought for conquest — the South 
for independence." It is not the cultured 
few, but the misled* multitude, who need to 
be set right. And it must be borne in 
mind that the masses reason through their 
feelings, judging a cause by their opinion 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 85 

of its supporters, and that that opinion is 
absorbed from prevaihng sanctions. The 
bnlk of the American people are still taught 
and still believe that secession was a wanton 
crime; the Government still designates its 
official war reports as Rebellion Records; 
countless millions of our women and chil- 
dren still weep and moan and pray over 
the morbid monstrosities of Uncle Tom's 
Cabin. They still find in that peculiar 
compound of fanaticism and cant nothing 
but a generous outburst against Southern 
cruelty and wrong; nothing but an inspired 
cry for the deliverance of the oppressed. 
They never dream that the moving story 
over which they agonize is but a florid 
romance, sanctioned to their use on account 
of what is called its '' divine morality." 
They cannot conceive of it as a mere com- 
mercial venture — a novel of the lurid sort, 
devised to inflame the passions and make 
the flesh creep — the joint product of a trio 
of habitual sensation-mongers — an emotional 



86 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

authoress, a drunken apostle of temperance, 
and a libidinous priest. 

SouTHEEN HiSTOEY ASSOCIATION takes 
high ground. It is a splendid publication — 
massive, scholarly, sedate. It follows its 
appointed course, moving majestically on- 
ward, its brow in the clouds, and with lofty 
aim firing steadily over the heads of the 
multitude. 

But meantime there are lowlier tasks for 
others. There are still a few simple truths, 
a few elementary principles which need to 
be enforced. For surely nothing can be 
more incongruous than a "government of 
consent" established by force of arms; 
surely nothing can be more unjust than a 
denial of the right to withdraw from an 
equal partnership ; surely nothing can be 
more absurd than to accuse a Sovereign 
State of the impossible crime of rebellion ! 

It is chiefly for the pressing home of 
obvious truths of this sort that we contend; 
and we assure our esteemed mentor that 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 87 

we should be delighted to perform the task 
more acceptably if we could but acquire 
the art of stating disagreeable facts in an 
agreeable manner. 

It is true enough that the Puritan has 
the merits as well as the vices of his type, 
but the same claim has been made in vain 
for the Cavalier, and it would surely be in 
shocking taste for the South to take leader- 
ship in a display of magnanimity — the 
Puritan's chosen attribute. Hence it should 
seem fair and necessary to unmask the 
maligner — setting down his blemishes beside 
the virtues which he vaunts — for to do less 
than this would be to leave all the weights 
in one scale. 

SouTHEEN History Association places 
generosity before justice, and while calling 
for "white light" gives to defamation a free 
hand. It contends that we should allude 
to the war period only in a spirit of "lumi- 
nous charity," yet we really fail to see any 
necessity for relinquishing an honest con- 



88 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

viction even at charity's behest. Something 
is due to principle ; something to memories ; 
something to righteous wrath. We may be 
faithful to the present without forsaking 
the past. Our physical conquest was com- 
plete, yet it could not touch us in subjuga- 
tion of soul. That is with ourselves. And 
it is right to rebuke those who defame 
us. Even among savage peoples it is the 
survivor's privilege and duty to guard his 
fallen comrades ; to light up watch-fires, and 
with missile or flame to drive off the evil 
birds and beasts which else would profane 
the sanctities of sepulchre and banquet on 
the dead. — Ed.] 



From The Spectaiok, London. . 

Mr. Cu.ssons seeks to vinilicate the South from North- 
ern attacks, reviews with severity a book of Mr. Goldwin 
Smith, and, among other things, says a word for the 
American Indian, who indeed has not been well treated 
in the States, but not better by the South than by the 
North. When large issues are challenged, it is natural 
LofC. 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 89 

to note a writer's accuracy in small matters. Mr. Gold- 
win Smith may be a shameless partisan, but he is not a 
"Doctor of Canon Law." The D.C.L. means •• Doctor of 
Civil Law." 

[The Spectatoe may be accurate in its 
criticism, but its dispute should be with the 
lexicographers, not with us. Webster gives 
D.C.L. as the abbreviation of ''Doctor of 
Canon Law."— Ed.] 



The Vicar of Langton, in Hokncasti.e News. England. 

* * * There are always two sides to every subject 
of public interest, and the key-note of Colonel Cussons' 
book is the onlv fair one, audi alteram partem. The 
emigrant. Professor Goldwin Smith, has used his literary 
position and influence in America to spread exaggerated 
ideas on both sides of the Atlantic, regarding the de- 
merits of the settlers of the Southern States, their ante- 
cedents, and system of life. Colonel Cussons espoused 
the cause of the Southerners (as he does in this book) 
and played a not unimportant part in their heroic strug- 
gle against the aggressive operations of the Northern 
Fedei'als. That struggle brought. into prominence lead- 



90 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

ers — with whom he was frequently in contact — such as 
"Stonewall" Jackson and General Lee, whose names 
will go down to posterity as scions of the Saxon race, 
not unworthy to rank with its greatest commanders ; 
since they fought, and often fought successfully, under 
almost unparalleled difficulties. More than once it was 
quite " on the cards " that the Confederates would win 
the game. Had it been possible for them to make a 
dash at a critical moment the North would have been 
at their feet. But a Fabian strategy was fatal. The 
unlimited access to munitions of war enjoyed by the 
Federals was bound, in a prolonged contest, to give 
them the mastery over forces which, however patriotic, 
were at last reduced to firing old nails instead of bullets. 
Professor Smith has only hardness and villification for 
these strugglers for what they deemed their rights; and 
Colonel Cussons, as one who does not compile his state- 
ments from garbled extracts, or " cook " his accounts to 
suit the Northern appetite, writes from the experience 
of actual events, and a knowledge acquired by taking 
his part in many of the leading episodes of a struggle, 
which has rarely, if ever, been equalled for its intensity, 
or for the interest which it created among the nations 
looking on. Of all wars civil wars may be said to be 
the most uncivilised ; their bitterness seeming to be 
increased in proportion to the proximity of kinship 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 91 

between the contending parties; and they leave behind 
them a legacy of corresponding hatred, to rankle in the 
breasts of generations to come. By the law of nations 
our own country was bound to stand aloof, rigidly neu- 
tral ; but there can be no doubt that the British heart 
glowed with a general and generous sympathy for the 
oppressed. Once only did England depart from that 
attitude, when, in the famous Slidell and Mason incident, 
the violation of English soil, by their forcible seizure, 
while on board an English steamer, compelled the British 
lion to plant his foot down, and to vindicate the national 
honour. The writer of this notice may here say that 
he was in Florence when the news arrived that the 
American Government had bowed before the peremptory 
demand of England, and released the two prisoners, 
and well he remembers the pleasure manifested among 
the Italians that England had so promptly and success- 
fully stood up for the right of sanctuary. That same 
sense of justice should make us welcome any work, 
which, like this of Colonel Cussons, aims at a fairer 
estimate of the parties concerned in that great Ameri- 
can contest, than has hitherto been propagated. In these 
historic essays we find the convictions of a mind having 
the capacity to grasp large issues, along with a mastery 
of small details, and the power to express them in lan- 
guage graphic and forcible. His exposure of the one- 



92 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

sided representations of the professor is complete and 
trenchant, while not the least pleasing part of the book 
is his defence of the Eed Indian ; a striking specimen 
of creation, much abused, not seldom unfairly down- 
trodden at the present day, too often individually de- 
generate, the effect of the onward march of the Avhite 
man, and. his concomitant brandy, and destined, it is to 
be feared, in a not distant future, to final extinction ; 
but originally a race, as Catlin has well shown to us, 
possessed of some fine characteristics. We only will add 
that we have read Colonel Cussons' book with pleasure 
and jDi'ofit) 'I'li''^ we commend it to those who would 
acquire wider and more impartial views of a subject 
which has too often been treated with bias and in a 
narrow spirit. 



From Glasgow Hki<.'\i.1), Scotland. 

The author of this volume is a Confederate soldier, 
and is still true to the cause for which he fought with 
conspicuous bravery. As such he enters a vigorous and 
pathetic protest against the teaching of history as it has 
been imposed by the victors. " Those Northern friends 
of ours," he says, "have been diligent in a systematic 
distortion of the leading facts of American history — 
inventing, suppressing, perverting, without scruple or 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 93 

shame — until oiir Southland stands to-day, pilloried to 
the scorn of all the world, and bearing on her front 
the brand of every infamy." He points out that this 
is particularly the case in Professor Goldwin Smith's 
" History of the United States," and gives instances of 
prejudice and partisanship in that well-known work. 
The result of the one-sided teaching of which he com- 
plains is shown in a pretty and touching picture. "Our 
grandchildren," he says, " trained in the public schools, 
often mingle with their affection an indefinable pity, a 
pathetic sorrow — solacing us with their caresses while 
vainly striving to forget 'our crimes.' A bright little 
girl climbs into the old veteran's lap, and hugging him 
hard and kissing his gray head exclaims : ' I don't care, 
grandpa, if you were an old rebel ! I love you ! ' " 

Another cause which Mr. Cussons champions is that 
of the American Indians. Speaking from knowledge 
and experience acquired from actual intercourse with 
them, in his early days, as scout on the plains, he denies 
that they are the cruel, heartless, treacherous savages 
so often described by American writers. Here, too, he 
protests against the onesidedness of contemporary his- 
tory, which sees nothing but good generalship when the 
Indians are surprised and massacred, but which at once 
raises the cry of treachery when they, as in the case 
of Custer, outgeneral, outmanceuvre, and outfight their 



94 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

adversaries. Such subjects as these do not, it is true, 
appeal very directly to any but American readers ; 
nevertheless, they are treated with an earnestness and 
a vigour which make the reading of the several papers 
and addresses very attractive, and which can hardly fail 
to excite the interest even of outsiders. 



From The Times, Kansas City, Mo. 

History always favors the victor at the expense of 
the vanquished. Had the fortunes of war been less pro- 
jjtitious, George Washington, "the father of his country," 
would likely to this day have been to all of us a bloody 
handed traitor. We should have been taught so to re- 
gard him in the school histories, and any attempt on 
the part of fair minded investigators to give us the facts 
as they really were would be apt to move us about as the 
occasional mitigations of the treason of Benedict Arnold. 
Washington we should be called upon to view from child- 
hood's earliest primers as a man who had, in the French 
war of 1765, held a commission with the armies of His 
Majesty George III of Great Britain, and who yet, but ten 
years later, took the field against his liege sovereign at 
the call of the colony of Virginia — 0, crime unutterable ! 

This is no wild flight of fancy. We have ample 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 95 

evidence of the tendency. Look at the history of our 
civil war that is served our children in the schools pub- 
lic schools. Even in the South the children are taught 
the story of the terrible struggle of a generation since 
from books poisoned, cover to cover, with prejudice and 
misrepresentation. 

This is a matter of immense significance in the 
South — of even greater significance now than heretofore, 
as those who personally recall the true spirit, the earnest 
patriotism, mistaken though it may have been, the sacri- 
fices of '61 to '65, pass away and a generation rises up 
that must depend for its premises in judging of the war 
upon the printed chronicles of the historians. The gross 
partisanry of these chronicles is soon apparent to the 
conscientious investigator, but the evil still obtains. 

In a strong new book, "A Glance at Current History," 
this tendency of the school histories to warp and misstate 
the cause of the South is ably handled by Captain John 
Cussons, Past Grand Commander of the Confederate Vete- 
rans of Virginia. This book is aggressively Southern in 
tone. In not "one line" is it apologetic. Yet it is 
straightforward and fair. Captain Cussons reviews a 
number of the school histories, the "text books" from 
which Young America is supposed to gain his knowledge 
of his country's past. Bitterly the old soldier points out 
the false coloring so persistently thrown over every phase 



96 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

of the Confederate struggle. There is invective, sharp 
and cutting ; there is irony and sarcasm. But there is 
pathos, too. "Our grandchildren, trained in the public 
schools," he says simply "often mingle with their affec- 
tion an undefinable pity, a pathetic sorrow — solacing us 
with their caresses while vainly striving to forget our 
crimes. A bright little girl climbs into the old veteran's 
lap, and, hugging him hard, and kissing his gray head,, 
exclaims: '1 don't care, grandpa, if you w^ere an old 
rebel, I love you.' " 

Captain Cussons insists it is a duty incumbent on the 
people of the South and of the whole nation to teach our 
children the truth about the Confederate struggle for 
independence. 

The book makes 172 pages and is printed upon good 
paper, in large type, and is handsomely bound in cloth. 



From The Dispatch, Richmond, Va. 

* * * The contents of the book are as follows : 
A Glance at Current History ; On History as Taught 
in Our Schools; On "Teachable" History; On the 
Outworn Theory of Government by Consent ; On Grant- 
ing Forgiveness Before it is Asked; On the " Treachery " 
of the American Indian. 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 97 

The cause of the South is championed with that 
incisiveness and directness for which Captain Cussons is 
noted. His review of Professor Goldwin Smith's History 
of the United States is a paper of great ability and 
force, showing the gross prejudice and vicious partisanry 
of that distinguished man, who has written a History 
of the United States which, unfortunately, has a large 
sale on both sides of the Atlantic 

Captain Cussons emphasizes the views he has fre- 
quently expressed as to our duty to teach our children the 
truth about the Confederate struggle for independence. 

The article on the American Indian is cjuite unique,. 
in that it takes issue with the saying of Phil. Sheri- 
dan's, that "there is no good Indian but a dead Indian.'" 
Captain Cussons was a famous scout on the plains when 
he was a very young man, and his wide acquaintance 
with the tribes that then roamed over that territory 
enables him to speak as an expert observer. He under- 
takes to show that the utterance in question is outrage- 
ously untrue. On the other hand, he shows that the 
treatment of the Indians by the American people has 
been barbarous in many cases. He gives instances of 
treachery on the part of our people, which certainly 
would seem to show that some of the reprisals of the 
aborigines npon our border settlements were not without 
justification. 



98 PRESS COMMENTS ON 

The book makes 172 pages, and is printed upon good 
paper, in large type, and is handsomely bound in cloth. 
We have not found a dull page m it. It is aggressively 
Southern in its tone. In no respect is it apologetic. 
And it is written in a style characteristic of the author, 
showing a luxuriant vocabulary, with the ability to con- 
centrate much in little, and an uncommon power to 
convey a flood of invective in a few' ironical sentences. 



From The Times, Richmond, Va. 

* * * No one question during the past several 
years has so engrossed the attention of the Confederate 
Veterans as the question of school histories for the chil- 
dren of the South. It has been shown time and again 
that histories were in use in the Southern schools which 
were written from the standpoint of the North, which 
treated the war between the States as a rebellion, and 
which made the impression upon the child that the 
Southern veterans w'ere rebels and traitors. 

Captain Cnssons, who is Past Grand Commander of the 
Confederate Veterans of Virginia, and former chairman 
of the History Committee, in his book, reviews a number 
of such histories, showing how utterly false they are and 
how utterly unfit they are for the children of the South 



MAR 11 1901 

A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 99 

to read. With a pathos akin to sadness, he says that 
"the world has decided against us," and that "there 
remains to us now but a single hope — the hope of win- 
ning and holding something better than a dishonored 
place in the hearts of our own children." 

Captain ' Cussons' book is written in an attractive 
style, vigorous yet chaste, and is a valuable addition to 
Southern literature. 




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